Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Canada Post and CUPW have reached an agreement. But that's not the end of the story. The real drama, Tom Walkom writes, is just beginning:

The main event – what to do with the Crown corporation – is set to begin next month.

That’s
when a four-person task force set up by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal
government is due to report. Chaired by the head of the Quebec Chamber
of Commerce, the task force has been told to “identify viable options”
for Canada Post.

In announcing the move this May, Public Services Minister Judy Foote said that everything except privatization is on the table.

The volume of mail has steadily declined. But the delivery of parcels has become a booming business. And, to take advantage of that fact, Canada Post bought Purolator Courier several years ago. But new circumstances mean that employment for mail carriers is on the line. And it leaves the corporation with two broad choices:

First, it can cut costs and raise stamp
prices. This is the strategy that Canada Post management is vigorously
following through its cuts to home delivery and its take-no-prisoners
approach to collective bargaining with the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers (CUPW).

The problem it faces is
that this strategy is ultimately self-defeating. As service becomes even
more inconvenient and expensive, fewer people will use the post office.

This can lead only to a death spiral.

Second,
the post office can cover part of the cost of those operations that
lose money by investing in activities that make money.

Canada
Post already engages in cross-subsidization. The money it earns by
delivering junk-mail helps cover the cost of standard mail. Its policy
of delivering letters anywhere in the country for the same price acts,
in effect, as a subsidy to those who correspond over long distances. Its
Purolator parcel delivery segment cross-subsidizes its less profitable
post office segment.

The corporation is now considering getting back into the banking business -- something which would benefit small communities. Whatever model the post office adopts, changes are coming down the pike.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Jane Philpott has been getting a lot of blow back for a ride she recently took in a supporter's limousine. It cost, admittedly, much more than public transportation. But Gerry Caplan has come to her defence:

Jane Philpott is exactly the kind of
citizen we should want in Parliament: a doctor of medicine, with a
masters degree in public health; doctored in Niger, one of the world’s
very poorest countries, for a full decade; chief of the department of
family medicine at her hospital; central to a Canada-Ethiopia
collaboration to develop a training program for family medicine in
Ethiopia.

Beyond any formal credentials, she is
known among all who work or deal with her for her decency, integrity and
deep devotion to her community. She is what the “honourable” in “The
Honourable Member” should mean.

And, unlike the former medical minister in Stephen Harper's cabinet, Philpott is trying to do something on the asbestos file:

This month something quite wonderful changed, as Kathleen Ruff has now enthusiastically reported on her website RightOnCanada.
She was “extremely encouraged” to learn that Jane Philpott is actively
involved with her cabinet colleagues in setting a new policy on asbestos
for Canada.

“I was glad to receive a
phone call from a policy adviser for Minister Philpott and had a
constructive and positive dialogue. I am extremely hopeful that in the
next session of Parliament the government will announce its plans to ban
asbestos, take measures to protect Canadians from asbestos harm and
play a leadership role at the UN in support of the listing of chrysotile
asbestos as a hazardous substance under the Rotterdam Convention.”

This is a very big deal after a decade of irresponsibility by the Harper government (including its well-known doctor, Kellie Leitch), and I, too, happily congratulate Dr. Philpott for living up to expectations.

So, yes, the ride in the limo was a mistake. But, Caplan writes, let's keep things in perspective:

With all the contrived indignation they could muster, opposition critics
were swift to leap down her throat, automatic media attention being
guaranteed. Canadian Press now immortalizes the entire issue as an
“expensive mistake,” referring to “the thousands” Philpott spent “to be
chauffeured around in a luxury vehicle owned by a Liberal volunteer.”
The actual figure seems to be about $6,500. This says more about
Ottawa’s obnoxious political culture than it does about our Minister of
Health.

Monday, August 29, 2016

A little more than a year ago, the lifeless body of little Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach. His image went viral and struck a cord around the world. Last week, the image of another battered child -- Omran Daqnesshes, also a victim of the war in Syria -- went viral. It reminded us of the depravity of which we are capable. But it should also remind us, Crawford Killian writes, of our duty to refugees and the benefits they bring with them:

If we treat them as unavoidable nuisances and a drain on our
resources, they will become a drain indeed: underschooled,
underemployed, alienated, linked to the rest of the country only through
the police and social services bureaucracy.

But if we treat the thousands of Alan Kurdis and Omran Daqneeshes as
an incredible stroke of luck, an opportunity to energize and sustain the
country as a prosperous democracy, we will do very well indeed. They
will enliven our classrooms, break our sports records, start new
industries and do business around the world in English, French and
Arabic.

Yes, they will bring unique problems that our schools and
universities will have to deal with. But we’ve dealt with the
traumatized and uprooted for at least 60 years, ever since we absorbed
almost 40,000 Hungarians in a few months after the 1956 uprising. The
University of British Columbia even took in a whole Hungarian school of
forestry. We’re a lot better at it than we realize.

The argument against accepting refugees is always the same -- they're not like us. But, if our memories are long enough, we'll remember that we're all refugees. And, but for fortune, we'd be refugees today.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

The New York Times has been looking into how the Trumps -- father and son -- have done business. Consider the following anecdote:

She
seemed like the model tenant. A 33-year-old nurse who was living at the
Y.W.C.A. in Harlem, she had come to rent a one-bedroom at the
still-unfinished Wilshire Apartments in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood
of Queens. She filled out what the rental agent remembers as a
“beautiful application.” She did not even want to look at the unit.

“I
asked him what to do and he says, ‘Take the application and put it in a
drawer and leave it there,’” Mr. Leibowitz, now 88, recalled in an
interview.

It
was late 1963 — just months before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed
the landmark Civil Rights Act — and the tall, mustachioed Fred Trump was
approaching the apex of his building career. He was about to complete
the jewel in the crown of his middle-class housing empire: seven
23-story towers, called Trump Village, spread across nearly 40 acres in
Coney Island.

He
was also grooming his heir. His son Donald, 17, would soon enroll at
Fordham University in the Bronx, living at his parents’ home in Queens
and spending much of his free time touring construction sites in his
father’s Cadillac, driven by a black chauffeur.

“His father was his idol,” Mr. Leibowitz recalled. “Anytime he would come into the building, Donald would be by his side.”

Over the next decade, as Donald J. Trump
assumed an increasingly prominent role in the business, the company’s
practice of turning away potential black tenants was painstakingly
documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as
the next frontier in the civil rights struggle.

And, when the Trumps were accused of discrimination in housing -- under the new Civil Rights Act -- young Mr. Trump reacted with what has now become a familiar routine:

Looking back, Mr. Trump’s response to the lawsuit can be seen as
presaging his handling of subsequent challenges, in business and in
politics. Rather than quietly trying to settle — as another New York
developer had done a couple of years earlier — he turned the lawsuit
into a protracted battle, complete with angry denials, character
assassination, charges that the government was trying to force him to
rent to “welfare recipients” and a $100 million countersuit accusing the
Justice Department of defamation.

Saturday, August 27, 2016

When he was defeated by his arch nemeses -- the Liberals -- and by the young upstart he claimed simply "wasn't ready," Stephen Harper went dark. Michael Harris writes:

He gave not a single interview after getting waxed in the 2015
election by Justin Trudeau. Las Vegas proved more attractive to the MP
from Calgary Heritage than the House of Commons, where, post-defeat, he
lurked rather than sat. And while he was doing little for his
constituents other than cashing his paycheck, he did find time to set up
his political consulting company in Calgary after a few visits to U.S.
casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Adelson is the man who has promised,
but not yet delivered, $100 million to support Donald Trump’s
presidential bid.

Even Harper’s resignation was an in-house Harper job, controlling —
and distorting — the message until the very end. Steve writing his own
report card, as he did while in office. (Did Ray Novak shoot that cheesy
video?)

Perhaps he thought that, after a good night's sleep, it would all go away. But it won't. His record will remain:

Here’s the real story. This ersatz economist delivered seven
consecutive fiscal deficits and ran through the $13.8 billion surplus
handed to him by the outgoing Liberal government of Paul Martin in a single year.
The country’s economy grew at a snail’s pace, wages stagnated — and
then the Great Navigator denied that the Great Recession of 2008 was
happening during the federal election of the same year.

Throughout most of that time — while he was smothering critics,
stifling information flow, practising vigilante justice on people like
Mike Duffy and Helena Guergis without facts, attacking the Supreme
Court, promoting unconstitutional legislation and surrounding himself
with people even Trump might not feel comfortable with — nobody called
him out for what he was. They were too afraid, because this guy took
down numbers.

Neo-liberalism predated Harper's rise. And it lives on after it. But yesterday Stephen Harper's political career ended -- not with a bang but a whimper.

Friday, August 26, 2016

It would be a lot easier if social democratic governments were elected during flush times. But voters turn to social democrats when times are tough. Consider the case of Rachel Notley's government in Alberta. Tom Walkom writes:

Notley was elected last May on a wave of
discontent. The ruling Progressive Conservatives were seen as out of
touch. Their fiscal solutions — spending cuts plus tax increases for the
middle class — were thought unfair.

Some
voters moved to the even more right-of-centre Wildrose Party. Others
gravitated to the NDP, with its call for higher taxes on corporations
and the rich, action on climate change and more spending on
infrastructure, health and education.

On
winning power, Notley moved quickly to implement part of her platform.
She raised taxes for corporations and the well-to-do. She also announced
a new carbon tax set to take effect next year.

She did all of this without antagonizing the main corporate players in Alberta’s oilsands.

If oil were still bringing in $100 a barrel, Notley would be doing swimmingly. But such is not the case:

The collapse in world oil prices and the consequent recession in Alberta have changed everything.

A
fiscal update this week from the provincial finance department predicts
that Alberta’s economy will shrink by 2.7 per cent this year, while the
unemployment rate will hover at about 8 per cent.

Government
stimulus is expected to create 10,000 new jobs this year. But that
number will be swamped by the 50,000 jobs already lost to the oil-price
induced recession.

Thanks in part to the
Fort McMurray fire, Alberta will face a $10.9 billion deficit this year.
The government’s books are not expected to reach balance until 2024.

Still, Notley is sticking to her guns:

The NDP government insists it will stay the
course — that it will not slash government spending and that it will
continue to fight the recession with fiscal stimulus.

Logic
is on Notley’s side. Her government may be running deficits. But net
debt as a percentage of the province’s gross domestic product is still
below 4 per cent, a remarkably low measure. By comparison, Ontario’s
debt to GDP ratio is about 40 per cent.

Her
promise to wean Alberta’s economy away from its reliance on the
vagaries of world oil prices should, in today’s context, have even more
urgency.

And her job-creation measures,
while not enough to make up completely for the collapse in the oil
economy, are better than nothing. Still, the pressure on her government
to change course promises to be intense.

Will she? Bob Rae did. And those of us who live in Ontario remember how that turned out.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

The Liberals have vowed to reform the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. John McCallum is making noises about developing a pathway to citizenship for them. But the program is a minefield because it was developed as a sop to business. Its raison d'etre was to keep labour costs low across the country. Tom Walkom writes:

The problem the Trudeau government faces is that the temporary foreign workers program in any guise is a low-wage strategy.

When
businesses say they can’t find qualified labour what they usually mean
is that they can’t find anyone at the wage they are willing — or able —
to pay.

Appearing before the Commons human
resources committee this spring, representatives of the meat packing
industry said they must bring in foreign workers because native-born
Canadians just aren’t interested in such tough jobs.

What
they didn’t dwell on was the fact that native-born Canadians are quite
willing to work in other tough manual jobs — such as the oil rigs — that
pay more.

Christopher Smillie of the Canadian Building Trades Unions put the
problem succinctly. “If employers can’t entice Canadians to take certain
jobs (they should) raise wages,” he told the committee.

After all, that is supposed to be how the free market operates. But the Conservatives -- who proclaimed their faith in free markets -- never really believed in them. What the Liberals believe is not entirely clear. And it's not entirely clear what they will do:

At one level, their problem is a practical one. Even if they are opposed
to using temporary migration as a wage suppressant, they live in a
world where this is the norm. That’s why, in an attempt to pander to
East Coast fish plants, they lifted the ceiling this year on the number
of temporary foreign workers seasonal employers may bring in.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

In the wake of 911, it's increasingly clear that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is seminal to Canadian democracy. The latest example of the Charter's importance is illustrated by a request from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Nadar R.Hassan and Stephen Aylward write:

Last week, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police adopted a
startling resolution calling for legislation that, on judicial
authorization, would “compel the holder of an encryption key or password
to reveal it to law enforcement.” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale
invited public debate on the proposal.

Police are responding to new challenges
wrought by modern technology. Encryption renders data unintelligible
without the user’s password. Even with a warrant to seize and search a
cellphone or computer, police cannot gain access to the valuable
information stored on those devices unless they can guess the password
(or hack into the device, as the FBI recently did with a locked iPhone
in the San Bernardino case).

Police worry
criminals are “going dark”— i.e., using encryption to evade detection
and prosecution. Compelling suspects to surrender their cellphone and
computer passwords is an enticing solution to this problem. But it is
one that ought to be unacceptable in a free and democratic society.

What is at stake is a basic principle of British Common Law:

The police chiefs’
proposal would lead to a radical erosion of our constitutional rights
protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When the
state accuses us of a crime, we are entitled to say, “prove it.” The
Supreme Court of Canada has said this right — the right against
self-incrimination — is the organizing principle of our criminal justice
system. An accused person is under no obligation to assist the state in
her or his own prosecution, whether by answering questions about where
she was the previous night or by revealing passcodes.

Canadian
law jealously protects the right against self-incrimination for reasons
that are both historical and principled. The right against
self-incrimination has its roots in the revulsion towards the 17th
century courts of the Star Chamber, which would detain supposed enemies
of the state on mere suspicion, compel them to swear an oath, and then
require them on pain of punishment to answer questions.

Our
constitutional law protects the right against self-incrimination
because we recognize there is a power imbalance in criminal
prosecutions, which frequently pit a single (often marginalized)
individual against the overwhelming power of the state. The right
against self-incrimination is the great equalizer. It ensures an
individual is put through the criminal process only once police have
built a case. It also protects the dignity of the accused and limits the
risk that state officials will abuse their power.

Since the 1970's, economic power has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Since 911, there has been a push to concentrate judicial power in fewer and fewer hands. We've seen the effects of the so called economic revolution. God help us if a similar judicial revolution takes hold.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Elizabeth May has announced that she will stay on as leader of the Green Party. That will make Linda McQuaig happy. She had advised May to stay put. But she's also advising May not to walk away from the BDS resolution which the party passed at its recent convention:

Whether you agree with
the boycott strategy or not, it is a peaceful way to protest a serious
violation of human rights: the fact that millions of Palestinians have
been living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza
for almost 50 years, with Israel effectively annexing their land.

Some commentators have suggested that it’s OK to criticize Israel, but a boycott goes too far.

In the end, words will not change things. Action is required -- the kind of action which Brian Mulroney took against South Africa's apartheid regime:

Back in the 1980s, it was divisive when Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney imposed sanctions against the white-minority
regime in South Africa.

Today, everyone agrees that Mulroney’s stance was laudable. But at the time it was highly controversial, with Mulroney acting in defiance
of business leaders, members of his own cabinet and caucus, as well as
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald
Reagan.

Some are uncomfortable comparing Israel to South Africa. Not so Desmond Tutu:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu considers the comparison valid. In a 2010
letter to students urging the University of California to divest from
Israel, Tutu wrote:
“[D]espite what detractors may allege, you are doing the right thing.
You are doing the moral thing…I have been in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and
housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in
South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.”

Monday, August 22, 2016

Deep Throat advised Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money. In the case of Donald Trump, reporters are beginning to take the same advice. Michael Harris writes:

Suzanne Craig of the New York Times reported in the paper’s
international edition that Trump’s heavily-marketed self-image is as
phoney as a degree from Trump University. Trump-owned companies carry a
debt of $650 million, which, as the Times reports, is “twice the amount
than can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid
for the White House.”

It’s pretty clear why he won’t disclose his income taxes, and why
he will never allow any independent valuation of his net worth. It kind
of looks like he’s up to his assets in debt?

They followed the same advice when they looked into the finances of Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager:

What kind of a dude was he? The kind whose name showed up on a secret
ledger in Ukraine that listed $12.7 million in cash payments to Manafort
from the political party of deposed Ukrainian President and Russian
puppet Viktor Yanukovych. When the New York Times reported that,
Manafort still thought that he could hold on.

But then the second shoe dropped: the Associated Press reported that in
2012, Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, had secretly channeled $2.2
million to a pair of Washington lobbying firms to boost the image of the
Kremlin-backed Ukrainian president in a way intended to circumvent
disclosure requirements.

So, Manafort had to go. But, then, Trump made a name for himself by firing people. Still, all this merely underscores a point which should have been clear from the beginning: Trump -- and Trump Tower -- is a House of Cards.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Jack Layton was a perpetual optimist. But Chantal Hebert believes he'd find it hard to be optimistic about his party's current state of affairs. Perhaps that's because the party under Layton made the Harper government possible:

At the last national convention Layton presided over, less than two
months after the party’s historic breakthrough in Quebec, he was rightly
celebrated for his election performance. But it was not all rainbows
and roses. Among NDP members, elation over the party’s accession to the
rank of official Opposition was often tempered by dismay at the advent
of a Harper majority.

Just as the Conservatives are having a hard time living down the stain of the Harper years, the Dippers have to contend with a public which holds the NDP responsible -- at least partially -- for Harper's ascension.

But there is a bigger problem. Unlike the Liberals, the next generation in the party is in no mood to take the reins:

The reluctance of the next generation of New Democrats to step up to the leadership plate
would trouble him. He would not be particularly thrilled by speculation
that Green Party Leader Elizabeth May could or should jump ship to come
lead the NDP. She always seemed to click more with her Liberal
counterparts (and vice-versa).

And the enthusiasm Layton generated in Quebec isn't there any more:

I live in Laurier-Ste-Marie, a riding the NDP
twice won against no less than then-Bloc Québécois leader Gilles
Duceppe. This week something that looked like an in-store raffle ticket
was slipped into my mail slot. It was MP Hélène Laverdière’s latest
correspondence.

It would be an exaggeration
to call it a householder for it gave no sense of the NDP’s plans for
the next sitting of Parliament. Instead it was a straw poll designed to
produce a list of priorities for the party to tackle. One can only
wonder what Layton would make of the NDP turning itself into a blank
slate.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Parsing the speech, which was read from a teleprompter, veteran
campaign strategists and historians noted that Trump sounded much more
like a conventional politician than he has all year. In their view, he’s
following a path of rhetorical evasion that has been well trod by
candidates in both parties.

Linguists and relationship experts, meanwhile, said Trump’s comments
were ineffective and that his words cannot accurately be described as an
“apology.” In fact, the GOP nominee did not specify exactly who or what
he was talking about. The targets over the course of his campaign are
plentiful, including the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, Sen. John
McCain, R-Arizona, Megyn Kelly, New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski,
Mexicans and Muslims.

Trump said he regretted any slips of the tongue he might have made. That one word -- regret -- signals that his apology is a non-apology:

New York University historian Tim Naftali, who previously directed the
Richard Nixon presidential library, heard Nixonian echoes as he watched
the tape of Trump’s speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday
night. Two men who Trump talks to – Roger Ailes and Roger Stone – worked
for the former president.

“An apology involves contrition. Neither Trump, so far, nor Nixon showed
real contrition,” Naftali said. “Nixon, at least, believed apologies
were a sign of weakness, which exposed him to more attacks from his real
and perceived enemies.”

The only apology Trump is capable of is a non-apology. He is the Orange Id -- a rolling wrecking ball whose prime product is toxic waste. If he weren't so dangerous, he'd be pathetic.

Friday, August 19, 2016

As Canada moves towards proportional representation, the Cassandras are wailing loudly. Andrew Coyne gives two examples -- from opposite ends of the political spectrum:

Here, for example, is Bill Tieleman, B.C. NDP strategist, writing in The
Tyee: “How would you like an anti-immigrant, racist, anti-abortion or
fundamentalist religious political party holding the balance of power in
Canada? … Welcome to the proportional representation electoral system,
where extreme, minority and just plain bizarre views get to rule the
roost.”

At the other ideological pole, here’s columnist Lorne Gunter, writing in
The Sun newspapers: “PR breaks the local bond between constituents and
MPs … In a strict PR system, party leaders at national headquarters
select who their candidates will be, or at least in what order they will
make it into Parliament …”

To the sceptics, Coyne writes, look at the countries where PR has been adopted:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, all of
whose parliaments are wholly or partially elected by proportional
representation.

We can at least describe accurately how their
political system actually works, rather than rely on caricatures born of
half-remembered newspaper clippings.

At one end, you have countries such as Austria, Finland, Iceland,
Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden, all with six to eight parties
represented in their legislatures — or about one to three more than
Canada’s, with five. At the other, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and
Switzerland, with 10 to 12.

Virtually all of these countries have some element of local
representation: only the Netherlands, whose total area is less than that
of some Canadian ridings, elects MPs at large. And none uses the
“strict” form of PR Gunter describes, known as “closed list.” Rather,
voters can generally choose which of a party’s candidates they prefer,
so-called “open lists.”

How unstable are these systems? Since 1945, Canada has held 22
elections. In only one of the PR countries mentioned has there been
more: Denmark, with 26. The average is 20. It is true that the
governments that result are rarely, if ever, one-party majorities. But,
as you may have noticed, that is not unknown here. Nine of Canada’s 22
federal elections since 1945 have resulted in minority parliaments.

The sceptics like to point to two countries -- Israel and Italy. But both countries are outliers:

The Israeli parliament has 12 parties, Italy’s eight. By comparison,
France, which uses a two-round system, has 14, while the United Kingdom
— yes, Mother Britain — now has 11. More to the point, there are
circumstances unique to each, not only in their parliamentary systems —
Israel uses an extreme form of PR, while Italy’s, which has gone through
several, defies description — but in their histories and political
cultures.

So, yes, it's important that the system be designed with care. But the fact that two countries have designed their systems poorly is no reason to reject the system outright.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

The Conservative Party of Canada is a pretty fractious group. Consider each of the party's leadership candidates. Brent Rathgeber writes:

Kellie Leitch comes from the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.
Before entering politics, she worked with the late Finance Minister Jim
Flaherty and his wife Christine Elliot, and was encouraged to run by
former Ontario premier Bill Davis. Her support for the ill-fated
barbaric cultural practices tip line notwithstanding, Dr. Leitch
qualifies as a ‘progressive’ conservative.

Tony Clement served under Mike Harris before entering federal
politics. He is a former president of PC Ontario and was said to be
close to Mike Harris. He can be a fiscal hawk. He’s also the king of
pork-barrel politics, having infamously diverted G8 security money to
unrelated projects in his own riding.

Michael Chong is both a Red Tory and a democratic reformer. The
author of the Reform Act, he once quit a cabinet position on a matter of
principle. He knows how responsible government and parliamentary
democracy are supposed to work.

Although Deepak Obhrai is tied for the longest-serving Conservative
MP record, I don’t recall ever having heard him give a speech on
domestic politics. I’m not sure what he stands for. His interests lie
primarily in global affairs. If nothing else, the Tanzanian-born
politician’s entry into the race shows that the CPC is still relevant to
new Canadians.

Max Bernier is the darling of the libertarian wing. His plans to
abolish supply management and end industrial subsidies also appeal to
fiscal hawks and free-market classical liberals. But his
live-and-let-live attitudes on social issues put him in direct conflict
with Brad Trost, who entered the race yesterday.

Trost is unapologetically pro-life and anti-gay marriage. At the May
CPC convention in Vancouver, Trost was the MP spokesperson for delegates
opposed to a resolution deleting from official Tory policy the
traditional ‘one-man-one-woman’ definition of marriage.

Each sect in the party has its candidate. But you see the problem. There appears to be no one who can bridge the divides. And those divides could tear the party apart. Conservatives may soon be asking the same question the Republicans are asking: Can the party survive its leader?

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Ever since the Green Party adopted a resolution to support the BDS movement, there has been lots of speculation about Elizabeth May's future. Gerry Caplan has suggested that she should consider running for the leadership of the New Democratic Party. But Susan Delacourt suggests she may join the Liberal fold:

No leader wants to be seen walking away from a party in anger, of course
— and May is a smart politician. It doesn’t strengthen her negotiating
hand to present herself as a leader at odds with her own people. But she
is. She called herself “broken-hearted” in the interview with Cochrane.

Working with the Liberals wouldn’t be a huge stretch for May. In 2007,
she and then-leader Stéphane Dion announced a red-Green pact, the terms
of which barred the Liberals from running a candidate in the Nova Scotia
riding where May was vying for a seat, while the Greens agreed to do
the same in Dion’s Montreal-area riding. The two were natural allies on
the environmental front in particular; the Green Party and Dion’s ‘Green
Shift’ covered a lot of common ground.

And May appears to be on very good terms with Justin Trudeau:

When Trudeau was an opposition backbencher, his assigned seat in the
Commons was right at the back of the Liberal ranks, close to May’s
desk. The two could often be seen chatting.

In the days before he became Liberal leader, she went so far as to
tell a reporter that Trudeau was much easier to work with than Thomas
Mulcair or the New Democrats.

“Over the last two years, I found Justin Trudeau to be collaborative and friendly,” May told the Georgia Strait
in April 2013. She contrasted her experience working with Trudeau to
her more strained, “discouraging” relations with the NDP leader.

However, with proportional representation on the radar, she no doubt would like to see the Greens benefit from the change.

May has said that she will take a walk in the snow -- something which admittedly is hard to do at this time of year. When she emerges, she says, she will have reached a decision. You can bet that nobody but May knows what that decision will be.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

The NDP is having a really hard time these days. They don't seem to know who they are -- and Canadians don't know who they are either. Rick Salutin writes that perhaps its time for the party to return to its roots -- not because returning to the past is a good idea, but because socialism is making a comeback:

Maybe it’s time to go
back to Coke Classic, by which I mean socialism. I don’t say this out of
nostalgia, it’s sheer opportunism based on empirical evidence. Because,
consider the recent, shocking revival of the term:

Bernie.
He says he’s a democratic socialist and always was. It should’ve sunk
him when he ran for mayor in Vermont in 1981, but he went on to
Congress, the Senate, then hijacked this year’s Democratic presidential
race and exacted a partly “socialist” platform in return for supporting
Hillary.

Corbyn.
Very old-fashioned leftist, without Bernie’s personal appeal. (God, I
miss him.) Corbyn’s a postwar Atlee or Nye Bevan British socialist. But
he’s moved his party and many beyond it. Even for a clear relic,
“socialism” has been a plus.

Hillary. Hold
the guffaws. Her sole contribution to political jargon has been, “It
takes a village.” It’s not her coinage but she adopted it. That sounds
to me like another way to say socialism.

But the really persuasive evidence can be found in the young:

The young today know the economy may never let
them own a detached home, or even a car, and they’re making peace with
that. When you turn 16 now, you don’t immediately run to get your
learner’s permit. That’s a sea change from earlier times.

What
do they care passionately about? Connectivity. If they had to choose
between a house (and car) or the Internet, there’d be no hesitation. I’m
not restating the messianic claims made 25 years ago about some
revolutionary transformation of human nature due to the Internet. But I
do think there’s been an anthropological shift in the baseline of what
counts as normal, day-to-day human experience.

Till
now – since forever – one of the ongoing, always underlying human
states of being was aloneness, out of which you stepped often into
social contact and then back again. Society was never absent but you
weren’t surprised to slide in and out of solitude. I don’t mean anything
romantic; just nobody around at the moment and that’s fine.

Now
the default state is connectivity. People don’t disconnect as they move
from home to work or just dart out to the store. They, especially the
young, are always connected. They wake in the middle of the night and
check where their friends are. They don’t panic if they go offline
(adults more so than youth, I’ve found) but what’s normal is
connectedness.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Last week, Donald Trump blamed the "disgusting and corrupt media" for not covering him "honestly" and for putting "false meaning into the words I say." Philip Bump, of the Washington Post, writes:

Donald Trump has the same ability as any other
candidate to say precisely what he wants to any voter in any state: By
advertising. He can buy ads in swing states and run 30- or 60-second
spots making whatever case he wants in any language he chooses. He can
send mail, he can knock on doors. He can, in other words, run a
campaign. But he’s not.

He isn’t running
any ads, spending zero dollars on television (and getting outspent by
the Green Party and Libertarian candidates). He isn’t contacting voters
on doors or on phones, and has hardly any field offices. He isn’t
sending mail. He’s tweeting and he’s holding rallies, and not much else.

And he’s holding rallies in places like Connecticut, where he was on
Saturday. He told the crowd there that he was going to make a “big play”
for the state, which one has to assume isn’t true. Trump won’t win
Connecticut, a heavily Democratic state. There’s no point in his wasting
campaign resources on the state (in the event he starts expending
resources anywhere) since it only holds a couple of electoral votes
anyway. It’s simply baffling that he would hold a public event there at
all, even if he’s not serious about carrying the state.

Trump trumpets his management expertise. But, given his many failed ventures and serial bankruptcies -- and now his floundering campaign -- it appears that he couldn't manage a two car funeral.

As a manager, he believes his prime function is to assign blame. Of course, he'd never blame himself.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Neo-Liberalism seeks to, in Henry Giroux's words, "atomize individuals." It's not a new idea. It pre-dates the rise of Donald Trump:

I have recently returned to reading Leo Lowenthal, particularly his
insightful essay, "Terror's Atomization of Man," first published in the
January 1, 1946 issue of Commentary and reprinted in his book, False Prophets: Studies in Authoritarianism.
He writes about the atomization of human beings under a state of fear
that approximates a kind of updated fascist terror. What he understood
with great insight, even in 1946, is that democracy cannot exist without
the educational, political and formative cultures and institutions that
make it possible. He observed that atomized individuals are not only
prone to the forces of depoliticization but also to the false swindle
and spirit of demagogues, to discourses of hate, and to appeals that
demonize and objectify the Other.

If there is one thing that Donald Trump is very good at, it's demonizing the Other -- whether she be Hillary Clinton or Mexicans. Trump's word for the Other is "loser:"

As has been made clear in the much publicized language of Donald
Trump, both as a reality TV host of "The Apprentice" and as a
presidential candidate, calling someone a "loser" has little to do with
them losing in the more general sense of the term. On the contrary, in a
culture that trades in cruelty and divorces politics from matters of
ethics and social responsibility, "loser" is now elevated to a
pejorative insult that humiliates and justifies not only symbolic
violence, but also (as Trump has made clear in many of his rallies) real
acts of violence waged against his critics, such as members of the
Movement for Black Lives. As Greg Elmer and Paula Todd observe,
"to lose is possible, but to be a 'loser' is the ultimate humiliation
that justifies taking extreme, even immoral measures." They write:

We argue that the Trumpesque "loser" serves as a potent new political
symbol, a caricature that Trump has previously deployed in his
television and business careers to sidestep complex social issues and
justify winning at all costs. As the commercial for his 1980s board game
"Trump" enthused, "It's not whether you win or lose, but whether you
win!" Indeed, in Trump's world, for some to win many more must lose,
which helps explain the breath-taking embrace by some of his racist,
xenophobic, and misogynist communication strategy. The more losers --
delineated by Trump based on every form of "otherism" -- the better the
odds of victory.

The unbridled individualism which drives neo-liberalism creates very few winners -- Trump sees himself as one of the few -- and turns everyone else into "losers." Its results are catastrophic:

Atomization fueled by a fervor for unbridled individualism produces a
pathological disdain for community, public values and the public good.
As democratic pressures are weakened, authoritarian societies resort to
fear, so as to ward off any room for ideals, visions and hope. Efforts
to keep this room open are made all the more difficult by the ethically
tranquilizing presence of a celebrity and commodity culture that works
to depoliticize people. The realms of the political and the social
imagination wither as shared responsibilities and obligations give way
to an individualized society that elevates selfishness, avarice and
militaristic modes of competition as its highest organizing principles.

Under such circumstances, the foundations for stability are being
destroyed, with jobs being shipped overseas, social provisions
destroyed, the social state hollowed out, public servants and workers
under a relentless attack, students burdened with the rise of a
neoliberal debt machine, and many groups considered disposable. At the
same time, these acts of permanent repression are coupled with new
configurations of power and militarization normalized by a neoliberal
regime in which an ideology of mercilessness has become normalized;
under such conditions, one dispenses with any notion of compassion and
holds others responsible for problems they face, problems over which
they have no control. In this case, shared responsibilities and hopes
have been replaced by the isolating logic of individual responsibility, a
false notion of resiliency, and a growing resentment toward those
viewed as strangers.

When you atomize people, you turn them into losers. One wonders what will happen if the public resoundingly declares that Trump is a "loser."

Saturday, August 13, 2016

I spent most of my career in newspapers and I’m not particularly
nostalgic for the print version. Like most people, I now consume most of
my news online. But I am worried about how the death of newspapers is
affecting newsgathering itself.

For generations, newspapers formed the core of non-partisan,
fact-based coverage of what was going in our communities. After waves of
cutbacks, reporting jobs are disappearing. In the U.S., there are
20,000 fewer positions in newspaper newsrooms than there were 20 years
ago. And though it’s great to see the growth of online media, from
Buzzfeed to iPolitics, so far it has not been able to make up the
shortfall.

Just last year, John Cruickshank, The Star’s recently
retired publisher, gushed that the tablet version of the paper, Star
Touch, was going to be “the biggest change in storytelling in a
century.”

And the concept which was going to revolutionize the business has fallen flat:

Before the tablet, there was “convergence.” Remember that? At the
height of the dotcom bubble in 2000, somebody had the smart idea that
the future would be about marrying telecommunications providers with
content companies like newspapers and TV stations. So we got the
mega-merger of Time-Warner with AOL in the U.S. and copycats in Canada —
BCE’s purchase of CTV and The Globe and Mail and CanWest Global’s purchase of the old Southam newspaper chain from Conrad Black.

Leonard Asper of CanWest Global breathlessly called his deal “the
ultimate convergence transaction.” By 2009, CanWest had collapsed. What
emerged from the ashes is Postmedia, the zombie newspaper chain that has
never made a dollar in profits for anybody except its executives and
whose stock last traded at 2 cents a share. And with new leadership at
BCE, that convergence miracle also collapsed and the Thomson family
ended up back as the sole owner of The Globe and Mail.

Journalism is in trouble. And, when journalism is in trouble, democracy is in trouble.

Friday, August 12, 2016

Like Chris Hedges, Thomas Frank has been analyzing what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party over the last fifty years. Don Lenihan writes that, if you really want to understand what's going on in this year's presidential election, you should read Frank's latest book, Listen, Liberal:

As part of the American left, Frank regards Roosevelt’s New Deal as
the high-water mark for the Democratic Party—a concerted effort to use
the power of the state to defend working people’s interests in the face
of economic calamity.

However, Democrats have ceased to be the party of working people, at
least according to Frank. Under Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama, the
party has begun catering to a new and very different class of people,
which he calls professionals.

And the evidence is in. Professionals have done very well under the Democrats. Working people have not:

Income inequality is the smoking gun. From the middle of the Great
Depression up to 1980, Frank reports, the lower 90 percent of the
population took home 70 percent of the growth in the country’s income.
Look at the same numbers between 1997 and today and the same group
pocketed none—zero, he notes emphatically.

Readers should pause to consider what an inconvenient fact this is
for Democrats. They like to portray themselves as fighting to protect
the middle class. They focus on the bank CEOs and captains of
industry—the notorious 1%—who’ve profited so nicely from the New
Economy. It turns out, however, that the professional class has also
done very well.

While Frank is appalled that this wealth has come at the expense of
the middle class, in his mind, the bigger scandal lies elsewhere. There
is no evidence this gap is going to close again. The professional class
is not, as Clinton promised, a rebirth of the middle class, but the
birth of a new elite. Indeed, Frank’s real point is that the interests
of the new professional class are profoundly at odds with working
people.

It's absolutely true that Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency. But a vote for Hillary should not be interpreted as approval or acceptance of Democratic Party policy since Bill Clinton. Roosevelt used to tell his supporters that if they wanted him to adopt policy, they had to push him in that direction.

Hillary needs to know that support for her comes at a price:

Working people are furious about what’s been happening to them. (Brexit
provides further evidence of the unrest.) And Frank makes a convincing
case that real debate over the causes has been stifled by group think
for a quarter century.

Bill Clinton’s new New Deal sells politics short. Globalization and the
digital economy may be forces that no one ultimately controls, but there
are all kinds of things that presidents (and prime ministers) can and
should be doing to shield working people from the worst effects. And
that should command their full attention.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Stephen Harper has disappeared. Rumour had it that he was going to resign his seat in the House. Jason Fekete writes:

He has registered his own company with two longtime aides and has all
but left politics, but questions persist about exactly when Stephen
Harper will actually resign as a member of Parliament.

Even members of the board of directors of his Calgary Heritage
Conservative riding association aren’t quite sure — they’re relying on
media reports.

It is approaching three months since reports first surfaced, shortly
before the Conservative party’s national convention in May, that Harper
would resign his seat as Calgary Heritage MP before the fall sitting of
Parliament, which begins Sept. 19.

He appears to be planning the next stage of his journey:

Harper, his former chief of staff Ray Novak, and Jeremy Hunt, another
longtime trusted aide, are listed as directors of Harper &
Associates Consulting Inc., a business incorporated in late 2015 with an
Ottawa-based address.

And, of course, he's still earning his parliamentary salary of $170,400 a year. At those prices -- and with the memory of the fear in the eyes of his underlings still fresh -- it must be hard to say goodbye.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

In the 19th century, we fought over religion. In the 20th century, we fought over language. And, as the National Energy Board considers Trans Canada's application for the Energy East pipeline, it's becoming clear that, in the 21st century, pipelines could divide the nation. Chantal Hebert writes:

As of this week and until the end of the year,
the National Energy Board is hearing from proponents and opponents of
TransCanada’s plan to link Alberta’s oil sands to the Atlantic coast via
a 4,600-km pipeline.

From New Brunswick the panel will be moving on to Quebec, Ontario and points west over the next four months.

But
the process is only a warm-up act for an expanding national debate that
could rival for its length but also its divisiveness the constitutional
wars of the early 1990s. Reconciling the economic aspirations of some
regions with the concerns for their ecosystems of many of the others
will not come easily.

Consider how the future of several governments hinges on pipelines:

At the top of the list is British Columbia
premier Christy Clark. She will take her ruling Liberal party to the
polls in about nine months. Between now and then, the federal cabinet is
scheduled to decide whether to give the green light to Kinder Morgan’s
plan to expand its Trans Mountain pipeline.

The
project has elicited stiff municipal opposition in the Greater
Vancouver area as well as within the aboriginal community. Although her
government came down against the project over the course of the NEB
hearings, Clark has kept her options open — possibly in the hope of
negotiating trade-offs that could bolster her party’s case on the
hustings. If the federal government gives Trans Mountain the nod later
this year, the issue stands to make the B.C. election the must-watch
event of the 2017 political season.

Few would be following a pipeline-driven B.C. debate more closely than Quebec’s Philippe Couillard.
He is to next face voters around the time the NEB is expected to make
its recommendation to the federal cabinet on Energy East in 2018.
Couillard might not have become premier if the last Quebec election had
not turned into a referendum on the Parti Québécois’ sovereignty agenda.
He might not fare as well in a plebiscite-style vote on a controversial
pipeline development.

In Alberta, the
province’s first NDP premier has staked her pro-pipeline agenda on a
more rigorous climate change policy. Rachel Notley is betting it will
make her provincial counterparts more amenable to facilitating the
transport of Western Canada’s oil to tidewater. If only to counter
opposition charges that the NDP is not economically competent, she needs
a win on the pipeline front.

And, of course, there's Justin Trudeau's government:

It has been sitting on a fence whose pickets can only become more
uncomfortable over time. As prime minister, Trudeau has nodded in the
direction of more pipelines on a number of occasions. But little could
do more to diminish his appeal to the left-leaning voters who have
abandoned the NDP for the Liberals including many of the Quebec and B.C.
voters who have been key to his majority victory than forcing a
pipeline through either province.

Meech Lake and Charlottetown have faded into history. But the next battle is about to begin.

Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Mel Hurtig died last week. He was an economic nationalist who watched as Lester Pearson sacked his hero, Walter Gordon. And he watched yet again as Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper integrated Canada into the American Empire. But, if you look around the world, economic nationalism is making a comeback. Tom Walkom writes:

Globalization is under
attack in the U.S. and Europe. Americans fret about the proposed Trans
Pacific Partnership deal and the existing North American Free Trade
Agreement. They have come to understand that such trade and investment
pacts don’t always work for them.

The
entire European Union project is being questioned in France, Italy and
the Netherlands. The single European currency is rightly viewed by many
of the countries that use it as a Trojan horse.

The
Council of Canadians, which Hurtig helped found, didn’t have much luck
in Canada when it argued against the proposed Comprehensive Economic and
Trade Agreement with the EU.

But it did have some success in Europe where its agitation helped produce a backlash that may well sink CETA.

The signs are everywhere. But those signs have been ignored by Canadian businesses:

Today, there is little support for economic
nationalism among Canadian business. Conversely, there is little desire
among the general population to protect Canadian firms that ultimately
don’t want protection.

Still, this does not
mean the urge for autonomy has disappeared completely from the country.
If economic nationalism means economic democracy then the spirit of Mel
Hurtig arguably lives on among those who want a fairer shake for the
middle and working classes.

It also lives on among those who don’t want the laws of the land overturned by foreign business in the name of free trade.

It may be one of history's ironies that Mel Hurtig's ideas will be more powerful after his death than they were when he was alive.

Given the fundamentals—the state of the economy, the President’s
approval ratings, and the fact that the Democrats are seeking to win a
third term in the Oval Office—history suggests that this should be a close election.
But Trump’s self-destructive antics, coming on top of what was a pretty
effective demolition job on him at the Democratic Convention, have, for
now at least, taken the pressure off Clinton. While one hesitates to
cite Newt Gingrich as an authority on anything other than zoos and his
next book contract, there was a good deal of truth in what he said to the Washington Post a few days ago about
Trump and Clinton: “The current race is which of these two is the more
unacceptable, because right now neither of them is acceptable. Trump is
helping her to win the election by proving he is more unacceptable than
she is.”

The Republican Party grandees are just as desperately trying to separate themselves from Trump, fearing that they'll lose the Senate. And that prospect has the Koch Brothers worried.

The truth is that the Republican Party has brought all of this on themselves. William F. Buckley used to boast about the crazies he had managed to keep out of the party. But, in 1968, Richard Nixon invited White Supremacists into the party. In 1980, Ronald Reagan offered evangelicals salvation. And, in 2000, George W. Bush invited Tea Partiers to party with him. Charles and David Koch's father was a card carrying member of the John Birch Society -- which held that Dwight Eisenhower was a Communist agent. And Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's counsel during his Senate hearings, was a family friend of the Trumps.

The Crazies are now the party's base. They put Trump where he is. He's a symptom, not a cause.

Sunday, August 07, 2016

In the midst of Toronto's most up market neighbourhood, stands Casa Loma -- a monument to one of the last robber barons of the 19th century. Linda McQuaig writes:

In the early 1900s, Toronto entrepreneur Henry
Pellatt used his enormous wealth to build the most magnificent private
residence ever seen in Canada -— a stunning palace that took 300 workers
three years to construct and featured an oven large enough to cook an
ox.

The construction of Casa Loma put to
rest any doubts about whether there was money to be made harnessing the
power of Niagara Falls, which was how Pellatt had made his fortune.

But, in 1907, after a series of referendums, Ontarians decided to make electricity generation the business of a public corporation:

The results of those referendums
overwhelmingly confirmed that Ontarians favoured wresting control of the
budding power industry from the clutches of a handful of entrepreneurs,
including Pellatt, whose effective monopoly enabled them to jack up
prices and restrict scarce electricity to communities where it could be
provided most profitably.

The vote followed
a long campaign by a popular alliance of farmers, workers, businessmen
and civic leaders, who fought to ensure the vast energy of Niagara Falls
would be developed, not for the benefit of Pellatt, but in the public
interest, as Howard Hampton and Bill Reno document in their 2003 book Public Power.

However, the government of Kathleen Wynne has decided to sell Ontario Hydro back into private hands:

Wynne is no privatization ideologue, but she
wants to use about $4 billion of the proceeds from the privatization to
build public transit and infrastructure.

These things need to be built, but is the solution to sell off vital public assets in order to build new vital public assets?

Wynne insists that, even though the government
will own only 40 per cent of Hydro One, it will be the largest single
shareholder with an effective veto over key decisions.

But
can we count on it — or future governments — to actually use that veto,
given their well-known timidity to interfere with private enterprise?

The neo-liberal agenda is alive and well. Don't let anybody tell you differently.

Saturday, August 06, 2016

Donald Trump's behaviour last weak appeared to be absolutely insane. Some commentators have taken to calling him the Kamikaze Candidate. But Tom Walkom warns his readers that there is a method to Trump's madness:

The billionaire realtor may be the privileged
scion of a wealthy family. But he can win only if he convinces enough
disgruntled Americans that he, like them, is an outsider — that he
stands aloof from the power elite, that he is not a slave to political
correctness and that he tells it like it is.

Up
to now he has succeeded by defying the experts, confounding the pundits
and doing everything a politician is supposed to avoid.

And so the outrageous behaviour continues. Do
the grieving parents of a fallen Muslim soldier challenge him? Then
Trump must double down — first by suggesting the wife’s religion forbids
her from speaking publicly, second by hinting that Clinton, who brought
this couple to public attention, cares only about non-white soldiers.

Does
the president of the United States accuse him of being unfit to lead?
Are the media on his case? Do his own party’s bigwigs take him to task?

To
the self-declared outsider, none of this matters. Indeed, such attacks
only prove his point that this election is about Donald Trump versus the
elites.

His party is desperately trying to rein him in. But don't expect them to succeed. It's all a con job. But Donald Trump has been a very successful con man.

Friday, August 05, 2016

There was a time, Andrew Bacevich writes, when "the outcome of any election expressed the collective will of the people
and was to be accepted as such. That I was growing up in the best
democracy the world had ever known -- its very existence a daily rebuke
to the enemies of freedom -- was beyond question."

Unfortunately, such is no longer the case. Both parties have nominated terrible candidates. Donald Trump is a narcissistic TV celebrity who, with each successive Tweet and verbal
outburst, offers further evidence that he is totally unequipped for high
office?" And Hillary Clinton " exudes a striking sense of entitlement combined with a nearly complete absence of accountability. She shrugs off her misguided vote
in support of invading Iraq back in 2003, while serving as senator from
New York. She neither explains nor apologizes for pressing to depose
Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, her most notable "accomplishment" as secretary of state."

But the problem runs much deeper than the two candidates. Three pathologies have taken root in American politics:

First, and most important, the evil effects of money: Need chapter and verse? For a tutorial, see this essential 2015 book by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard: Republic Lost, Version 2.0. Those with no time for books might spare 18 minutes for Lessig's brilliant and deeply disturbing TED talk.
Professor Lessig argues persuasively that unless the United States
radically changes the way it finances political campaigns, we're pretty
much doomed to see our democracy wither and die.

Needless to say, moneyed interests and incumbents who benefit from
existing arrangements take a different view and collaborate to maintain
the status quo. As a result, political life has increasingly become a
pursuit reserved for those like Trump who possess vast personal wealth
or for those like Clinton who display an aptitude for persuading the
well to do to open their purses, with all that implies by way of
compromise, accommodation, and the subsequent repayment of favors.

Second, the perverse impact of identity politics on policy:
Observers make much of the fact that, in capturing the presidential
nomination of a major party, Hillary Clinton has shattered yet another
glass ceiling. They are right to do so. Yet the novelty of her candidacy
starts and ends with gender. When it comes to fresh thinking, Donald
Trump has far more to offer than Clinton -- even if his version of
"fresh" tends to be synonymous with wacky, off-the-wall, ridiculous, or
altogether hair-raising.

Third, the substitution of "reality" for reality: Back in 1962, a young historian by the name of Daniel Boorstin published The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. In an age in which Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton vie to determine the nation's destiny, it should be mandatory reading. The Image remains, as when it first appeared, a fire bell ringing in the night.

According to Boorstin, more than five decades ago the American people
were already living in a "thicket of unreality." By relentlessly
indulging in ever more "extravagant expectations," they were forfeiting
their capacity to distinguish between what was real and what was
illusory. Indeed, Boorstin wrote, "We have become so accustomed to our
illusions that we mistake them for reality."

Trump may be unconventional. But that's no reason to vote for him:

Let me be clear: none of these offer the slightest reason to vote for Donald Trump. Yet together they make the point that Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate, notably so in matters related to national security. Clinton is surely correct that allowing Trump to make decisions related to war and peace would be the height of folly. Yet her record in that regard does not exactly inspire confidence.

And that's his point. Neither candidate inspires confidence. But, until the three pathologies are rooted out of the system, there will be more Trumps and Clintons.

Thursday, August 04, 2016

Suncor Energy CEO Steve Williams rocked the oil industry boat last
week when he announced a plan to leave some of the company’s oilsands
reserves unrecovered during a conference call with investors.

Williams said the company is working to develop a plan with
Alberta to “strand” its least economical reserves, a proposal that
appears to align with the call of environmentalists to leave the
high-cost and high-carbon fossil fuels in the ground to prevent
catastrophic global warming.

“We are advocating in a modest way to work with government so that we can strand some of the oil in the oilsands,” Williams said.

It remains to be seen whether the Alberta government will buy into Williams plan:

Keith Stewart, head of Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy
campaign, said Williams surprised many people with his call for a new
approach to the oilsands, but it’s unclear how Alberta will manage
Suncor’s request.

“It’s important to recognize that what [Williams] really wants to do
is ‘high-grade’ his existing reserves, exploit only the cheapest and
most profitable parts,” Stewart said.

The Alberta government, which relies on oil royalties, may be
reluctant to allow companies to back out of oil extraction agreements,
Stewart added.

Extraction agreements are managed under Directive 82, a regulation Alberta might have to alter to accommodate Suncor’s proposal.

“Lease agreements often establish rules that limit ‘high-grading’ and
Suncor is clearly trying to get those rules changed,” Stewart said,
adding this would likely help companies shut-in low-performance in situ
operations.

It's only a small change. But it's the first time in a long time that someone from the oil industry has talked about leaving bitumen in the ground. The train is leaving the station.

About Me

A retired English teacher, I now write about public policy and, occasionally, personal experience. I leave it to the reader to determine if I practice what I preached to my students for thirty-two years.